MARC records from Melvyl - UC libraries

jblander · Post by **jblander** » Wed May 02, 2007 4:02 pm

UC library searches in Melvyl via Bookends return MARC library codes that are very different from the normal school name. For example, the MARC record might include: 852a - GLAD; but GLAD refers to Berkeley; when doing a web search on Melvyl, the amalgamated record shows UCB, probably because of some internal db conversion. Is there any way to store, e.g., a conversion table for all the UC schools (and others stored in Melvyl) for MARC imports (or even for later conversion, if not at import), in order to avoid Global Search and Replace (which conceivably could impact some records incorrectly) - keyed to whatever fields one uses to import such library availability info?

I always try searches via Melvyl first, since I'm at a UC school, and hence ILL requests are always faster and easier through UC schools. So this is a regular issue; and it would be fantastic to figure this out, so I don't have to remember the alternate codes. It would also be extremely helpful for research assistants and the like, who need to pass along the info to a supervisor but who don't want to leave the information so cryptic.

Post by **Jon** » Wed May 02, 2007 4:56 pm

Hi, I can see how that's a pain, but I don't see adding something so highly specific and limited. If you are at a UC school, have you contacted the library to ask why they do this, and perhaps more to the point could the more common names be provided.

Jon
Sonny Software

jblander · Post by **jblander** » Wed May 02, 2007 5:27 pm

Jon wrote:Hi, I can see how that's a pain, but I don't see adding something so highly specific and limited. If you are at a UC school, have you contacted the library to ask why they do this, and perhaps more to the point could the more common names be provided.

Jon
Sonny Software

I can see why my description didn't get across my more general thought; I certainly wouldn't expect anything so specific. Let me try another suggestion: perhaps there could be conditional formatting, similar to what is used in the bibliographic formatting. Something like: if field a="BBB", then "CCC". I wouldn't need that specific syntax, of course; but something like that is what I have in mind. Others might want it for other reasons: anything prior to a certain date could force an "Antiquarian" field to be populated; that's a dumb example, but you get the idea, and it's all I could think of in a hurry.

FWIW, the Melvyl website says that those field codes are used because they name the underlying databases. Apparently they are fixed no matter what other system/db changes happen, and since Melvyl individual UC library records into one record, it needs a fixed record to maintain the integrity of the data. Not really sure how convincing that is, but it's probably because there is 30 year old code they don't want to change.

Post by **Jon** » Wed May 02, 2007 5:39 pm

Hi, I got the gist of what you wanted. Really, global find/replace is the tool to use. You want to have some way to make this automated (either at the db import or the formatting level). I honestly can't think of a way to do this without some rather fearsome interface overhead, and although I see your need I don't believe this would be a generally useful feature. Note that we do have such a feature in place for journal names (the glossaries), but that is a special case (it is required on a regular basis by anyone in the biomedical research).

Jon
Sonny Software